Warren Haynes

ARTICLES ABOUT WARREN HAYNES BY DATE - PAGE 2

For Mickey Hart, former drummer with the Grateful Dead, synchronizing the musicof exotic cultures with rock 'n' roll is a life's work. To hear him tell it, the arrival of his latest cross-cultural project, Bembe Orisha, at the House of Blues on Thursday, isn't that much of a stretch from his 30-year tenure in the Grateful Dead. The Dead ventured from jug-band music to blues to the avant-garde to country in the '60s before finding their voice as in improvising rock band. "Bembe is on a similar journey," Hart says of the eight-piece band, which includes musicians from Iran, Cuba, India and Africa.

The late legendary guitarist Duane Allman had a simple answer for those who asked why the Allman Brothers required two drummers: He wanted to feel the "freight train" behind him. Duane Allman died nearly 31 years ago, but the train rolls on, and it roared through the Chicago Theatre for the first of three concerts Wednesday. (Tickets remain for Saturday's final show.) Butch Trucks and Jaimoe, a.k.a. Jai Johanny Johanson, have been shoveling coal in the Allman Brothers' engine room since the '60s, and they played with a seen-it-all swagger and drive, daring the relative newcomers on the front line to keep up with them or get out of the way. This is a band that has never tolerated raging egos or grandstanding solos for very long.

Though less than two years ago it wouldn't have seemed possible, a retooled and re-energized Allman Brothers will take over the Chicago Theatre for three shows Wednesday, Thursday and June 22. In June 2000, Dickey Betts' sudden, acrimonious departure had left the Allmans in disarray. Two months later, Govt. Mule was devastated by the death of bassist Allen Woody from a heroin overdose. The man caught in the middle of both crises was guitarist Warren Haynes. "When Woody died, I just pulled the plug on everything, it freaked me out so much," Haynes recalls.

If Jerry Garcia was arguably the heart of the Grateful Dead, bookish bassist Phil Lesh was clearly its mind. Lesh, with his training in classical music and jazz, was the major impetus behind the Dead's shift from a relatively conventional folk-blues ensemble into what became the prototype for today's jam bands. After having a liver transplant nearly two years ago, and parting ways with the Other Ones (the band made up of most of the other surviving members of the Dead), Lesh has maintained a busy touring schedule with his own band, Phil and Friends.

A former bassist for the Allman Brothers Band was found dead in a New York City motel, police said. A chambermaid found Douglas Allen Woody's body Saturday morning. There were no visible signs of trauma, and the cause of death is still unknown, police said. Woody joined the Allmans as a bassist in 1989, in one of the '70s supergroup's later incarnations. He left with slide guitarist Warren Haynes in 1997 and the two formed a trio called Gov't Mule, with drummer Matt Apts. Woody, who was 44 and lived in Nashville, is survived by his wife and their 3-year-old daughter.

Gov't Mule Dose (Capricorn) (star) (star) 1/2 The gruff neo-soul vocals of Warren Haynes recall Gregg Allman's, but otherwise Allman Brothers refugees Haynes (guitar) and Allen Woody (bass) sound little like their former band. Joined by drummer Matt Abts, Gov't Mule is a heavier, harder-hitting beast than the Allmans; the trio packs a slow-grind wallop nearly on par with ZZ Top or the Melvins, but with a more spacious, jazzlike adventurousness (more than half of the 11 tracks run past six minutes)

Despite brushes with extinction in the form of lineup changes, accidents, booze, drugs and a shrinking market for blues-rock, the Allman Brothers remain a powerhouse after three decades of off-and-on togetherness. Laugh if you must at a band that still insists on making room for drum solos by its three--count 'em, three--percussionists, but such indulgences aside, the Brothers still burn while most improvising jam bands prefer to meander. Contemporaries of the Grateful Dead, the Brothers are often lumped in with the brigade of post-hippie jam bands.

`What a long strange trip . . ." Whoops! Wrong band. Make that, "The road goes on forever." Although it was the Allman Brothers who performed Tuesday, in the first of five sold-out shows at the Riviera, the grinning gray ghost of the Grateful Dead not only loomed, it was given a tour of the room by guitar dervish Dickey Betts and company. The Brothers snuck in a couple of Dead quotes into their three-hour performance, including a snippet of "St. Stephen" amid an epic "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" that was met with a throaty roar of recognition by the startlingly youthful audience.

You'd think Allman Brothers Band guitarist Warren Haynes would take some time off for a little rest and relaxation now that the Brothers have cut back on their hectic schedule. Not so for this Asheville, N.C., native. The 35-year-old guitarist used his free time to whip into shape Gov't Mule, a taut, bruising blues-rock trio he formed with Allman Brothers bassist Allen Woody and drummer Matt Abts, whom Haynes played with in the Dickey Betts Band. The band is touring in support of its debut CD. "It takes a lot of juggling, so to speak," Haynes said during a recent telephone interview from New York.

Art Robert Farris Thompson, organizer of the pioneering exhibition "Face of the Gods: Art and Altars of Africa and the African Americas," will speak about the show at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th Pl. Admission is $5 ($10 including reception). The exhibition continues at the museum through Aug. 29. - Alan G. Artner Classical Written in 1977, Leonard Bernstein's "Songfest" is one of the most inspired of his later scores, an extended cycle of songs for six solo voices and orchestra to poems by Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes and others.